Ahmed Hassan, a Shiite Turkmen who was displaced from Tal Afar and has been living in the predominantly Shiite province of Babil since 2015, told Al-Monitor, “Sectarian strife has erupted among Turkmens. The Shiites among them have fled to Shiite areas in the center and the south, while Sunnis headed to Kurdish areas or crossed into Turkey.”
He added, “Shiite Turkmens will avoid going to Mosul even after expelling IS, because the latter has instilled a dogmatic ideology in the city’s citizens, which will take time to wither."
Of Turkmens, he said, "We are a minority in an unfriendly environment. We have been ethnically persecuted by Arabs and Kurds, while Shiites have been subjected to more sectarian persecution by Arab Sunnis because they are Shiites.”
Despite multiple projects to divide Ninevah between the Sunni Arabs and Kurds, Shiite Turkmens are accused of being supported by the armed Popular Mobilization Units seeking to establish a Shiite province in a Sunni environment, to serve as a safe land route for Shiite factions and Iranian forces to Syria to ensure logistic communication and armament.
On the other side, Sunni Turkmens have been calling for the Turkish army to participate in the upcoming military operations to liberate Ninevah, to protect them along the front lines of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which is protecting the Kurds in Syria and Iraq.
The Sunni-majority Ninevah province is also home to other ethnicities, including Arab Shiites, Shiite and Sunni Turkmens, and Kurds. There have been efforts to preserve the diversity, as was the case before the IS invasion. However, there are some agendas seeking division that have resulted in the displacement and suppression of minorities such as Shiite Turkmens.
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